SharePoint Migration: Things you need to know - Cloud

What you need to Know before you think about SharePoint Migration

If you are still not using SharePoint then here is what you are missing. SharePoint has been a great platform and a productivity driver the use varies from Web Content Management to Record Management, Document Scanning, Dashboards and Most Importantly Workflows.

If you already have, congratulations you are using a right platform. However, are you aware of SharePoint online and office 365. Do you know you can use SharePoint in on-premises, online and hybrid environments.

It becomes essential to not only have a long-term technology vision but also a SharePoint migration and upgrade roadmap that delivers efficiency. Some organizations have encountered failure when it comes to migration and today I am going to talk about the most common reasons for this.

Hosting Choice

SharePoint Migration

There are more options than ever when it comes to hosting and organizations tend to ignore (modern / new hosting) them. Organizations that are not open to considering some of the new hosting environments may miss the opportunity to take full advantage of SharePoint and the new products/enhancements that become available.

Hosting in Office 365 can be a great choice for an organization that wants to automatically get the latest offerings from Microsoft for SharePoint and other integrated product. Azure provides a way for an organization to eliminate the need to manage physical servers and yet still have control over the configuration, content, and administration of SharePoint.

Rushing the Process

It’s often said that speed thrills but it kills, yes many projects flat line because of the rushing part, especially when either of envisioning and planning or both phases are rushed to jump on the migration part. Data model and other issues may not become apparent until when users first encounter them in production. Take the time to check every detail before the start of migration to minimize risk. Migrating to SharePoint requires adequate planning and preparation.

Workflows and Customizations are the obvious things to test but other elements, including security, are just as important. Ensuring security and permissions allows to migrate as expected and helps avoid serious data exposure. This is especially important if you have intellectual property assets or sensitive data stored in SharePoint.

Managing your Identity & Access Management

Having the Azure active directory setup is important, this allows organization to have room for future cloud transformation at a faster pace while keeping all elements core infrastructure foundation (identity and access management) in place.

If your organization is still using SharePoint on premises it is still a good idea to move your Active Directory to cloud so when the need arise you can be faster and resilient.

If your organization is already on office 365 means your domain is already registered with Microsoft, this scenario allows you to benefit from the best of both worlds. SharePoint online and SharePoint on premises. You can plan for a migration in phases and move to the cloud where you are always up to date with latest features and technology.

Ahmed Tahir Masood

" Ahmed Tahir Masood is Vice President at KALSOFT USA. He has worked in organization like MICROSOFT and INTEL in his 17 year long career. Tahir understand technology, innovation & business from variety of tangents, he is well aware of trends and how marketing is shaping with outset and realization of new technologies. With strong expertise & experience in enterprise cloud architecture, he has helped several organizations to have right cloud strategy."

Ahmed – November 13, 2017

Shahid – September 26, 2017

Cool!. In fact I always recommend all custom solutions to be built on SharePoint. That saves humongous dev time and cost for common elements that sharepoint already gives you like surveys, document attachments, kb articles, forums, blogs, …..

Plus you get HA and request throttling from day one for your solution as another free benefit!